“I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people …” (Isaiah 42:6)
My husband and I had been praying for a couple of years for the Lord to show us what He wanted us to do next. We were winding down our careers and closing companies and were hopeful that He would give us direction to use our skills and experience for His Kingdom. But we had no idea what that would be.
One night my husband woke out of a dead sleep and got an idea: build a business for making bait — plastic fish bait — that could be replicated in other countries so that missionaries would be able to create jobs for the people they were serving. He woke me up after he paced the bedroom and told me. He said that he felt the Lord had given it to him in a complete package, a vision, and he was shaking. This was not normal for him. So, I listened. Was this what the Lord wanted us to do?
It really made no sense to either one of us, to be honest. We both hated fishing, for one thing. And we knew absolutely nothing about the business, or manufacturing for that matter. Still, we had to take this seriously because it felt like the Lord was behind it. We wanted to be obedient to His call. So we asked our friends to pray for us, and we asked missionaries to see if the idea was viable to them. Everyone was affirming the call. We kept praying and kept getting a calm that seemed to confirm it too.
We had our reservations, to say the least. One morning prior to having our devotions together, my husband was really mad. I asked him what in the world was wrong with him. He yelled, “I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS BAIT BUSINESS. THE WHOLE THING IS STUPID.” I told him, “OK, no problem. We won’t. But let’s read this morning’s passage.”
He calmed down and started to read the verse at the beginning of this entry: “I, the LORD, have called you …” and then he stopped and couldn’t speak any more and he was crying. I was afraid he was having another stroke. But he handed me the book and I continued to read the passage, then prayed for the both of us with my eyes wide open in case something medical was happening.
When he was able to start talking again, he said to me, “Looks like we are getting into the bait business. I felt the Lord’s presence — a physical presence — when I started that verse and I had to stop because it was overwhelmingly powerful. I know I can’t say ‘no’ to this.”
We got the business going: bought machines, hired staff to design molds and others to make the bait. Our business model was to make bait for other companies and generate enough income to start building the hand molds for the missionaries. We set up systems that could be replicated. We gained a lot of clients faster than we thought we would, so we were encouraged. We also had a few missionaries who wanted to get started on the program, so that was exciting. It seemed like God was blessing the vision He had given us. We thought we were on our way to building God’s Kingdom by helping others love others in practical ways.
But God had something else in mind.
The business came into some serious troubles. Clients delayed payments. We were running a deficit. Machines started breaking down. Our employees did too. Someone had a heart attack on the shop floor. Another went into a full-on meltdown when his wife had an affair. Another had a cancer diagnosis and had to get a double mastectomy and chemo. Two men got so mad at each other they started a fist fight. Someone else got arrested for DUI and had to go to jail. We tried to show the love and wisdom of Jesus through it all, but nothing seemed to come from anything we did or said. We kept praying for help for the next mess.
We pivoted the business model and started making our own bait, hoping that would generate more income as well as be a more direct path to helping the missionaries. We had secured a huge sale and then the retailer backed out because of unanticipated financial problems. We were in a spiral.
We had personally funded the business with our retirement money and we were running out of that. Stress does not begin to describe how we were feeling. We were shocked. We were mad. We were confused. Afraid. We reasoned, “Why in the world would God give us this vision only to have us be a colossal failure?” It didn’t make sense. If we hadn’t had a “burning bush” moment at the beginning, we would have stopped!
But we didn’t want to pull the plug until we had given every available dollar to the cause; we didn’t want to hold back from God. The Lord dealt with each of us in different ways until we both concluded that we need to start thanking God for the setbacks as well as the successes. There were more setbacks at this point, so there was plenty of opportunity to show gratitude. My husband and I started to pray differently with each other. We repented more of our own self-sufficiencies, we saw vividly that this was the Lord’s company and we surrendered to Him to do whatever He wanted with it. We saw that He had given us our money to begin with and if we lost it all, He would still be with us and show His goodness to us. Our privilege was to thank Him for it all. That released a freedom and peace that buoyed us; we were no longer drowning with an anchor tied to our ankles.
In the end, we ran out of money. We had to shut down the company. We lost it all. So from an earthly perspective the whole enterprise was a waste. We were deeply sad, to be sure, but we did not see it as a failure. The Lord had humbled us, refined us through the sorrow and comforted us with His presence in a new and palpable way. Following His lead was the only measure of success that mattered.
Read Paul’s resume in 2 Corinthians 11:22-33. Both our devotion writer and Paul wrestled with the messiness of life. Not all our days will seem “prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1:8) Write out from your perspective, what God might be up to when He calls us into apparent failure, danger or suffering. Feel free to Google “Scriptures that apply to failure, danger or suffering,” and write out a statement that summarizes what you have found.